MANDALAY (UCAN): “It’s telling that Rohingya aren’t clamouring to return to the places where they recently survived genocidal attacks. The authorities are attempting to distract the world from mass atrocities committed by the army,” Matthew Smith, chief executive of Fortify Rights, said, as it seems that a deal between the Myanmese government and United Nations (UN) agencies has done little to inspire confidence that refugees will agree to be repatriated from Bangladesh.

DHAKA (UCAN): The government and aid groups in Bangladesh are preparing for disastrous flooding in the upcoming monsoon season which weather forecasters have warned will arrive early at the end of May. It usually starts in June and lasts until August.

Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury, minister of the Disaster Management and Relief Ministry, told journalists that disaster preparations are in place.

YANGON and DHAKA (UCAN): Mohammad Salim and his family were packing their belongings and getting ready to flee when the violence erupted on 25 August 2017 in the north of Rakhine State, Myanmar, as the military sought to target Rohingya Muslim militants.

However, unlike hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who have left the strife-torn state to live in camps in neighboring Bangladesh for fear of ethnic persecution at the hands of the army, Salim decided to stay put.

MANDALY (UCAN): Plans by Myanmar’s government to resettle Muslim Rohingya refugees in southern Maungdaw in the restive Rakhine State are meeting up with opposition from other ethnic groups from the area.

Some 80 people from civil society groups across Rakhine held a meeting in the state capital, Sittwe, on February 24 to discuss the resettlement of Rohingya returning from Bangladesh.

Of course, it is almost impossible to get past the ongoing visceral horror of the plight of Myanmar’s ethnic Muslim Rohingya people; over 650,000 of them brutally forced from their homes onto the margins of existence into crowded, inadequate, life-threatening refugee camps.

DHAKA (UCAN): The military of the Union of Myanmar admitted for the first time that its soldiers, along with Buddhist villagers were responsible for the murder of 10 alleged Muslim terrorists at Inn Din village in Rakhine last September during a counter-insurgency operation.

A statement issued on January 10 said, “Villagers and members of the security forces have confessed that they committed murder.”

MANDALAY (UCAN): The government of Myanmar will start the repatriation of Hindu refugees to Rakhine on January 22.

At least 3,000 of an estimated 8,000 Hindus living in Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Sittwe were internally displaced, while others crossed over to neighbouring Bangladesh when Muslim Rohingya fled the clearance operations of the Myanmar military.

HONG KONG (SE): “The presence of God today is also called Rohingya,” Pope Francis said on December 1. The BBC reported that the pope’s unscripted comment was made during an interfaith meeting in Dhaka during his visit to Bangladesh when he also met with a group of Rohingya refugees and listened to their stories.

“In the name of all of those who have persecuted you, hurt you, I ask forgiveness,” the pope asked the refugees. “I appeal to your large hearts to give us the forgiveness that we are asking.”

Hong Kong (SE): At end of his four-day visit to Myanmar on November 30, Pope Francis had met with the country’s president, Htin Kyaw; state counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi; its senior military general and army chief, Min Aung Hlaing; as well as leaders of the Buddhist, Muslim, Baptist and Jewish faiths.

To the dismay of some observers and rights advocates, not once while in Myanmar did he publicly use the word, Rohingya.

HONG KONG (SE): One thing about being a well-known person of influence, or what the Japanese would call having a wide face, is that there are always plenty of people around ready to give you advice, even though much of it may be conflicting.